


Collect Your Memories

by orphan_account



Series: October Gore Challenge [2]
Category: Yume Nikki | Dream Diary
Genre: Car Accidents, Gen, Suicide, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:18:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>just kind of a combination of my yume nikki theories (mostly for my baby monoko) along with the story of the manga i guess?? it's super sad oops.<br/>day 2- extra limbs/eyes/etc</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collect Your Memories

**Author's Note:**

> just a warning this just gets increasingly sad and is mostly madotsuki's thoughts so yeah

The frog was the first effect. It had to be. Things in worlds can only stay in their worlds, there was no other way the frog could’ve gone otherwise. “Collect the effects” was written in her diary. It was the first time something strange had happened since she started having the dream with the world of doors. After she found the frog, everything started getting weird.

Maybe it was because they were weird that she was supposed to find the effects. The normal things in the abnormal worlds were what she was supposed to find and collect, right? Madotsuki couldn’t even think about what would happen after she found them all, if she ever did. How many were there? How many would she be able to find? Are the worlds dangerous?

There was a dead body on the road. No matter how hard she tried, she could only identify it as a regular human corpse. Hesitantly, she reached down. Immediately after touching the cold body, she fell back, her head feeling heavy. She expected to see black when her head hit the road, but instead heard a sound of metal. She sat up and reached up to pinch her cheek but she only felt cold metal.

The road would’ve pitch black if it weren’t for the street lamps. Now, Madotsuki saw a green tint on the shadows. She thought something was happening, someone was attacking her even.

“Stop!”

The tint changed to red. She was terrified. That’s when she realized what she said.

“...go?”

The tint was green again. It must’ve been the effect. Her head was a stoplight.

She didn’t know where she was anymore, she had gone through the door that didn’t look like a door. So she just started walking. The world around her changed from a forest lined highway to a world of what seemed to be blocks. Blocks stacked everywhere, surrounding her.

She was just looking for something that wasn’t a block. She turned down paths and was eventually determined she was going in circles. She had no clue what was leading her or where, but she felt like she knew the directions to go. In one of the blocks, she found a dark maroon-colored hat and scarf. She started to put them on and the stoplight was gone.

The hat and scarf made her nostalgic and warm. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a matching hat and scarf. They were being worn, though she didn’t know by whom. She followed them and tried to reach out to them, but they kept walking away.

“Stop!” Her yelling the word made her think of the stoplight. She took off the hat and scarf and thought about being the stoplight again. She opened her eyes and saw the green tint again.

“Stop!” The person stopped and Madotsuki stepped closer, realizing there was no one there. The matching hat and scarf was simply floating. She lifted her hand to see if it would go right through them. It stopped as if someone was there and she felt a feeling deep in her body. Within a second, the world around her changed again.

She was standing on a purple block with a black gate in front of her. Everywhere else around her seemed to be endless darkness. Up and down, left and right, darkness. The only way she could go was through the black gate.

She switched the stoplight to the hat and scarf again, it being her favorite effect. It wasn’t until then she realized why they were called effects. The frog had literally turned her head into a frog’s, the stoplight made every moving thing stop in its tracks. As she walked, she was trying to pinpoint something that happened when she found the hat and scarf. The only thing she could think of was how it made her feel. Did her emotions count as an effect? If she remembered, she would write about it when she woke up.

She then remembered that she can always wake up. She had been taught since she was a young girl, pinch your cheek to wake up from the nightmares. Could dreams turn into nightmares? Was she in control of the dreams? Did they mean anything? Her thoughts never left her alone while she was exploring. The worlds only increased her curiosity.

Knowing that she can switch the effects was a large step in her exploration. If all else failed, if she got stuck, she could try using different effects. They were like friends. They helped her in situations where she needed it. Though thinking of the effects as friends made her realize how lonely she was in the dream world.

The world that the gate led to was entirely black and white with a strip of red every once and a while. She kept walking, contemplating her own loneliness. She started wishing there was someone with her. She looked up and realized there was.

The girl almost blended in with her surroundings. She was monochrome. It almost looked not human, but Madotsuki recognized her.

“Monoko…” She felt tears rolling down her face. She hadn’t thought about Monoko in so long. Madotsuki had almost forgotten that she was in a dream.

“Since I’m dreaming…are you alive?” Monoko didn’t move. She was still, as if she was paralyzed. She was just like Madotsuki remembered, her school uniform and pigtails like she always wore.

“Monoko, why do you look like that?” Madotsuki was scared and her voice was shaking along with her crying. Monoko looked directly at her. Her eyes were blank and lifeless.

“N-No, this isn’t right...st-stop it!” The hat and scarf was replaced with a red stoplight. Before Madotsuki could stop it, Monoko’s body drastically changed.

Limbs were growing from her body. Madotsuki watched in horror as an arm grew out of Monoko’s head. Her eye was dripping along with her mouth on the same side. Rather than looking like tears or drool, it looked like she was melting.

The image of Monoko on the street after being hit was the only thing in Madotsuki’s mind. Her bones were snapped and visible, her organs coming out of her body. There she was again in front of her, distorted and unnatural. Madotsuki didn’t even notice her own screaming.

Somehow, she woke up in her bed, crying and panting. She saw Monoko, and she saw Monoko’s accident after equipping the stoplight effect.

The effects were her answer to the dreams. Madotsuki would be able to piece together everything if she could find them, wouldn’t she? She was trapped in her dream world, though now she was thinking of it as a nightmare world. She didn’t want to think about what the other effects meant, but she had to if she ever wanted to escape. She started thinking about the events rather than the effects.

They were thoughts in her head. They could never leave. They would always haunt her dreams. Monoko’s death was only the beginning. They were thoughts in her head. They could never leave. They were thoughts in her head. They could never leave.

The words repeated as she walked out to her balcony. They repeated as she reached for the rail. They repeated as she climbed. They repeated as she let go.

They repeated until she fell. In her last moments, she wondered if her image would haunt anyone else’s dreams. She wondered if anyone would be able to stand on the 8th balcony from the bottom of the apartment building.

Before she hit the ground, she said out loud, “I’m so sorry.”


End file.
